Sometimes the draws in tennis are really strange. Some players come across Jelenas way all the time, like Conchita Martinez (10 times), Elena Dementieva (9 times) or Lindsay Davenport (7 times). Others are basically always in the opposite have of the draw, and some players face Jelena exactly once every year.

23 year old Marlene Weingärtner (pronounce: mar-lay-nuh vain-gart-ner) from Boris Beckers hometown Leimen in Germany is one of the last category. She lost to Jelena at the second round of Manhattan Beach in 2001 6-2 and 6-1, at the second round of Key Biscane in 2002 6-3 and 6-2 and of course its a second round match again, which will be played today on center court, and shown live on tv from eurosport!

The german no 2, who is a passionate painter, and had a career high ranking of 36 but Marlene is suffering permanent back-pain, and so she was never consistant enough to establish in the top 50, though she has a few remarkable results, especially earlier this year as she upset the raigning chamion of the Australian Open, Jennifer Capriati, in the opening round Down Under! Further she beat another power hitter at a top tournament, Eleni Daniilidou at Key Biscane, but on the other hand she had losses to as famous players as Gubacsi, Rodionova, Kalyuzhnaya, Pin or Vakulenko.....

Yesterday the current no 79 of the world won her first round match against the twofold German Open champion Conchita Martinez with 6-2 and 7-5, though she lost her 4-1 lead in the second set. But she was still able to decide the set for herself due to her aggressive tennis and finally won the set deservedly. After the match she answered a few interestin questions:

Q. You have a tough draw. First Conchita now Dokic. Do you like playing top-players?

Marlene: Yes, actually I love it. You always have a chance to beat them. I guess most of the players prefer to face top-players instead of unknown ones, but the next round is going to get really though.

Q. Today you played very agressive. You used to play more defensive tennnis.

Marlene: Yes, i try this for quite a while now. My coach has told me to do so. It always depends on who i play, though, but in general i play more agressive now. I do not think that much, i just hit the ball across the net. But it was hard vs. Conchita, with all her slice balls. You are very much in danger to make easy mistakes against her.

Q. How is your back pain? Do you feel ok now?

Marlene: Its not gone completely but i feel alright.

Q. You said vs. Martinez you had to play offensive. How will you play vs. Dokic?

Marlene: I got to talk about that with my coach first. She plays very consistant, and so i guess i have to do that too, but if you play to much save against her she will blast you off the court. You have to put a lot of variety into your game against her, but at the end, i guess i should not think about it to much, and just play my game.

So much about Marlene Weingärtner, but i found a last interesting bit about her: Marlene is coached by a croatian guy named Borna Bikic and he claims to be a former coach of Jelena Dokic. Personally i have never heared of that guy but maybe you know more as i do and we can discuss that on our baord at

http://www.jelena-dokic.com/board/

The match will start at about 1.30 pm local time which equals with Belgrade and is 4.30 am at Los Angeles, 7.30 am at New York, 12.30 pm at London and 9.30 pm at Sydney.


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Gerhard
www.jelena-dokic.com